Surveillance and monitoring systems are increasingly including digital network cameras. During installation of cameras in such a system a digital video management system generally is used to configure the cameras. Such a digital video management system is often part of a surveillance/monitoring central where all data, including video, is checked, stored, processed, etc. This is particularly true for large monitoring or surveillance systems including hundreds of cameras. Even smaller systems in which a local storage is performed usually uses at least one central surveillance computer or server which is arranged to request and receive or, in some cases, only receive streaming image data for processing and possibly storing.
The configuration of these types of systems includes accessing each camera and setting the streaming address of the camera to an address of the surveillance centre. Alternatively, the cameras are connected to a remote surveillance/monitoring centre or a remote video managing and storing centre, where the video data can be accessed for viewing and evaluation.
One problem with many of these types of surveillance/monitoring systems is that they are complicated to install and that they require a lot of onsite arranged hardware. These problems may be solved by having a service provider host the video offsite, i.e. using a service where each camera is automatically connected to a remote server which is controlled by a service provider and the person or organisation in charge of monitoring the site may access and be provided with the video from cameras, the alarms, etc, via servers of the service provider. However, using such a service provider the person/organisation responsible for the monitoring must be prepared to trust the service provider both from a quality perspective and from an perspective of personal integrity.